Ongoing Israeli military operation in occupied West Bank is ’an act of war’: Mustafa Barghouti

Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, says the ongoing Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank is “not just raids … it’s an act of war”. “What Israel is doing is conducting a war on occupied people which is a total violation of international law on how an occupying power should behave,” Barghouti told Al Jazeera, stressing that the West Bank has been under Israeli occupation since 1967. “They are using air strikes, air force, tanks, bulldozers, and what they are trying to do is to transfer the actual genocide and ethnic cleansing ongoing in Gaza into the West Bank,” Barghouti said. The amount of damage Israeli forces inflicted on the Palestinian territory’s infrastructure also indicates their goal to make it uninhabitable for its citizens, Barghouti added. “They destroyed water pipelines, electricity lines, houses, schools – what do they want? They want to create a situation where we cannot live in our country and that is exactly what the settler